In a medical emergency, skills matter ? and a trained, paramedic professional can make a life-and-death difference.
That’s the message MGEU ambulance and community paramedics will be sharing with the public in a new advertising campaign hitting Manitoba airwaves today.
“Our paramedic professionals are a crucial part of our health care system and the demands for the services they provide are only increasing,” MGEU President Michelle Gawronsky said. “The reality is paramedics can play an even bigger role in delivering health care and we want to share that message with Manitobans.”
Featuring actual paramedics, the radio and online ads broadcast throughout the province this month help show the breadth of skills required and the wide range of emergencies paramedic professionals are trained to respond to.
For instance, one online ad gives the public a peek into a paramedic's bag, which contains over two hundred supplies, instruments, and medications — from a chest decompression kit to a bone gun. And an ambulance contains even more equipment (such as a defibrillator/cardiac monitor, traction splints and IVs) to help paramedics stabilize patients and save lives.
“As a profession, paramedicine has been evolving and growing to meet Manitobans’ health care needs,” Gawronsky said. “Many people may not know this, but we now have community paramedics who are trained to handle habitual 911 callers. They help these vulnerable Manitobans receive the care they need while reducing the need for expensive ambulance transports by as much as 60%.”
Given this, Gawronsky said the ads will also touch on paramedic self-regulation, which the government recently committed to pursuing.
“As highly trained professionals, it only makes sense for them to have their own self-regulating body just like other health professions in Manitoba,” she said.
Self-regulation, is based on the idea that members in a certain profession are best able to govern or review their fellow practitioners based on consistent skills and shared experience. Among the many benefits, self-regulation means paramedics will have portability of skills, allowing them to engage in their full scope of practice anywhere in Manitoba (as opposed to having the skills they can perform limited by the region they work in), and it provides greater transparency and accountability for the public when concerns about care may arise.
To hear the ads, share a campaign image online, or learn more about paramedics and self-regulation, visit ParamedicProfessionals.ca.
The MGEU represents almost all of the province’s 1,000+ paramedics across Manitoba.